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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The garden is about to get a timed dripline installation. The lines are out and mostly connected, with only a few details to finalize before setting the timer and turning on the water. The drip system will allow us to get away from the garden for more than 1 to 2 days at a time, and will probably use less water than our current soaking method. Marigolds are going nuts with flowers; this one is being visited by a skipper butterfly. Peppers have a lot of little white flowers. We've got one tomato almost red enough to eat, and another one or two getting that way. (Yay!) We have some very happy chocolate mints (and two that aren't as large as this one, which are mainly growing from roots after some large-leaf die back, and one is still indoors, generating roots). And we've got more than one white cabbage butterfly laying little white eggs all over the kale. Don't know what to do about that. I presume the eggs will hatch and turn into leaf-devouring larvae. Yuck.The zucchini squash are also doing well, with several blossoms and a few small zukes.

Date and time of main garden photo: July 21, 2009, at 7:30 am. Larger photos - except for the tomato and zuke photos that were taken today - were taken on July 15th and 17th.

Julia, I'm impressed with the mints, too. They started so small! And first there was almost zero sun, and now it's just blazing, and they aren't in the shade until mid-afternoon, poor things! The one mint that is still in water inside, is a stem with leaves from when I split a larger mint in two - split so I could get part of it planted. It's not growing roots very fast, but is a nice indoor mint.

Amanda, the marigolds are there with the anti-pest idea in mind. I do know that the cabbage butterflies aren't landing on them, but they aren't keeping them away from the cabbage! They may help with little flies or things, not really sure. Regular, non-cabbage butterflies love them for their nectar.

Nice work! The first of my tomatoes have just started to turn from bright green to greenish-orange this week.

Fixing the outside tap is on my husband's to-do list; until then I'm watering by can, with lots of trips up and down the stairs! My neighbour has taken pity on me and started spraying whatever she can reach from the gate when she waters her own garden!